Different Versions of the Cloud of Unknowing
I'm far enough along in my work on The Cloud of Unknowing to respond to some requests to comment on the various versions I'm working with, so here goes. These comments at the moment are little more than very rough impressions since I'm only about a third of the way through creating the parallel text. I will list the versions in order of closeness to the original manuscripts, but not necessarily in order of merit.
However, it should be remembered that while editors such as Underhill and McCann copy the word 'behold' from the manuscripts they are using, none of the introductions or the translators takes into consideration the importance of this biblical word, which is absolutely central to the Cloud itself. The possible exception is Progoff, who uses it at least once. There is also the problem that the translators substitute modern words for the Middle English that distort the meaning of the original: McCann's substitution of 'deadly' for 'deedly' is an example, the former having negative connotations, and the latter being a Middle English word that contains the entire history of salvation, from the fallen deeds of human beings to the great deed done by Christ and those of his saints which, with grace, are in the gift of all the redeemed, mortal though they be.The problem with any translation of a Middle English text is that modern English is much more linear, two-dimensional—and duller—than older versions.
In addition, all of these interpreters without exception fall into the 'experience' trap (discussed in previous posts, especially since September 2010) in rendering the Cloud—this in spite of the fact that several of them seem to understand the problem, e.g., Progoff, who is the most explicit about it in his introduction, and Walsh, whose text is full of footnotes on this point even though he is one of the worst offenders as regards using the word indiscriminately. All of the introductions, with the exception of Hodgson, should be taken with a very large handful of salt, each for a different reason.
A further problem is that most of these versions have a Counter-Reformation view of 'spiritual direction' and take pains to impose this model on the text where it doesn't exist. Again, Walsh is one of the worst offenders. They also fail to distinguish between confessor and director, which are two distinct functions, even though a confessor may give advice. It is significant that the Cloud-author uses 'counsel and conscience' to indicate taking advice from the elders, but makes it clear that the ultimate discernment was up to the individual, thus avoiding the unhealthy dependence attached to Counter-Reformation (and contemporary) 'spiritual directors'. In the Middle Ages the role of confession was strong, but the notion of a personal confessor was rare outside of aristocratic circles. In a monastery one could go to whom one chose, though the selection necessarily might be limited. The goal of the Cloud-author is to teach self-forgetfulness, not self-preoccupation, as he takes great effort to explain.
The Counter-Reformation's rigid ideas about so-called spiritual direction would have been considered shocking in the Egyptian and Syrian deserts: the maxim of the desert was non-interference (what some religious traditions call 'respect'). One did not presume to tell another what to do or think or how to pray. Often a suppliant would beg and cajole one of the Fathers or Mothers for direction, but the elder would respond with silence. This tradition also recognised that the same person did not always have the Word for the seeker, hence the saying about half the time spent in cell, half the time consulting the elders (plural). There were no novice-masters in the Carthusian Order at the time of the Cloud. There were elders, again, in the tradition of the Egyptian desert.
Finally, none of these versions really presents the Cloud-author in all his energy and complexity: the modern term 'edgy' perhaps comes close to describing him, at least for me. His text does not shrink from conveying raw truth in no uncertain terms. He can be unexpectedly tender; he uses humour, sarcasm, and biting satire. He does not hesitate to make trenchant judgements. (We must remember that the modern notion of never 'judging' people is a misinterpretation of the biblical injunction, which in fact means that we must never judge finally, i.e., claiming to judge from God's point of view; but in fact we must make judgements all the time if we are to negotiate our lives. This does not preclude engaging people with respect and without preconception or stereotype.)
The Cloud-author, to my way of thinking, would have been a fiercely intelligent, very amusing, slightly scary and utterly refreshing person to know, a genuine radical, one who wants to renew the connection with the roots of the Order in the apophatic tradition over and against the prevailing devotionalism of his day. He is something of a force of nature and maybe a bit of a loose cannon. He's not worried about being popular. He knows that what he is writing is dangerous for the times. He is not a kindly uncle, or a pontificating 'spiritual father', or a genteel commentator; least of all is he a human potential guru or a buddy. Each of the versions below, aside from Gallacher's version of the text itself (though not excepting Gallacher's introduction), falls into one of these unlikenesses. Like Julian's Long Text, the Cloud is, in the end, untranslatable.
1. The benchmark version is Hodgson; it's the one that scholars use. This volume contains all the works of the Cloud-author and Hodgson's work is impeccable. However, the text is in the Middle English spelling, which the non-scholarly reader may find difficult. The other drawback is that there is a lot of interesting work that has been done on the Cloud since this volume was published, and those seeking to pursue matters further would do well to check the bibliography in some of the later versions. René Tixier's work is quite wonderful.
2. Gallacher's version. This was published by TEAMS and the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University. This version follows Hodgson very closely—I haven't done a line-by-line check yet—and has the advantage not only that the spelling is modernized but that in addition to being published as a paperback it is also available online www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/gallachr.htm. There is a helpful glossary and some notes. I don't think much of the introduction, to put it mildly.
3. Underhill version. This is the closest of the modernized versions to the Hodgson benchmark but has some curious interpolations about spiritual direction, possibly due to her contact with von Hugel. She has not changed many words and for the modern reader may have not changed enough, but her version hast the advantage of clarity without intruding too many anachronisms. She has kept thee and thou and the -eth endings but somehow these are not intrusive as with McCann. This version is published online at several sites including the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Type 'Cloud of Unknowing Underhill' into your search engine. She omits the author's hyperbolic phrases that would offend genteel sensibilities, such as the mention of cutting off of private parts in chapter 12.
4. McCann. Oh dear, there are a number of problems here. First, while he claims to have used an assortment of mss, his version differs from Gallacher/Underhill enough so that one suspects he is privileging the Ampleforth manuscript, which he calls the 'second recension', and which is very different from the Hodgson text. Next, he has paraphrased, often quite patronizingly. His filter seems to be an effort to make this radical manuscript acceptable to a highly conservative, anti- 'modernist' pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic church. He has kept 'thee' and 'thou' and the -eth endings but there is something deliberately antiquated, a bit kitsch olde worlde about his paraphrases for reasons I haven't been able to put my finger on—yet. He also censors phrases such as that in chapter 12 about private parts—but we have to cut Underhill and McCann a little slack in this regard as they were working in the 1930s. McCann somehow makes the Cloud author sound precious, which he most certainly is not.
5. Wolters. Wolters' is an outright translation and he has the same concerns as McCann to make this work acceptable to a very conservative Roman Catholic audience on the cusp of Vatican II. His version has the advantage that he has dropped the 'thee', 'thou', and '-eth', but sometimes his paraphrases amount to Counter-Reformation glosses, and he seems to leave out or condense sections. He claims to be using Hodgson, but he also says he has consulted McCann, and, like McCann, he leans towards Ampleforth and the Latin (the original text is in English). As I create a parallel text of these versions, there are often times when I wonder if Wolters and McCann are using the same Middle English text as I and some of the others are.
6. Walsh tries to make the Cloud-author into a neo-scholastic, which he most certainly is not. His translation is prolix and full of the 'experience' problem. He is prone to making absurd and completely unsupportable claims such as: the practice the Cloud teaches cannot be undertaken by non-Christians. His scriptural and other citations are often wildly scattershot, not really seeming to relate to the text properly, as if he had a lot of references on slips of paper and threw them all up in the air and then wrote down whatever came to hand. He did the same with Julian's texts. However, his text has the advantage that it includes Richard Methley's comments in the footnotes. To my ear (but maybe this is due to the fact that I dislike his translation so much) he sometimes sounds fatuous.
7. Spearing is a self-confessed Cartesian and thinks that the ideas that you use to construct a sense of self are in fact your self, a view that is directly contrary to the Cloud-author's. In Spearing's paper on Marguerite Porete (whom, as he himself says, he doesn't understand, doesn't like, and is perhaps quite frightened of—one wonders why he published this paper), he scoffs at the notion of excessus mentis; he won't allow it. It seems rather strange for a self-proclaimed Cartesian to reject empirical science. Thus, in spite of the readability of his translation—if anything, it is too smooth—he gets the most of basic points wrong, exactly backwards, such as interpolating 'at himself' in the mirror section, when the whole point is that there is nothing to look at. And of course his text is full of 'experience'.
8. Progoff. This translation was done long before he became a journaling guru. In a strange way I rather like Progoff's translation: he is psychologically acute and his view in the introduction of who the author was rings true. However, he leaves out chunks of the text; the book was badly edited and sometimes his sentences don't make sense; and his application of Freud and Jung in the introduction is hopelessly crude and out of date.
Progoff's strengths far outweigh his weaknesses. He understand the 'experience' problem even if he is careless in his use of the word. He states bluntly that 'If, for example, the individual feels or experiences himself as being in unity with God, that very feeling and awareness of an experience indicates that real unity has not yet been achieved . . . the individual who experiences God thereby emphasizes the duality of his own individual existence, his personal thatness, and the existence of God as separate from him. In that case it cannot be said that he knows god truly and intimately in oneness.' Hooray for Progoff; would that the others had been so insightful and so forthright.
9. Johnston. This purported translation—only in part; it is really more a platform for Johnston himself—is so strange and has so many modern interpolations that I often wonder if he is using the same text as the rest of this group as a basis for what he is writing. Johnston comes from a humanistic psychology and human potential movement background, and is anachronistically continually looking at the Cloud through the lens of the much later John of the Cross. Johnston feels free to move paragraphs around or omit them altogether, to interpolate material that simply isn't there or even implicit. I'm not quite sure what this book is, but it doesn't have a lot to do with The Cloud of Unknowing.
My recommendation? Read Gallacher, with Underhill and Progoff together as a pony. Use a little Spearing if you have to in order to clarify but remember that he doesn't accept the basic premises of the text psychologically, theologically or philosophically. Keep in mind, too, that while his text is smooth, at key points it is exactly opposite to what the original says.
In closing I should say that I realise there are other, more recent, purported versions of The Cloud of Unknowing out there, but having glanced inside their covers I have not had the stomach to go any further.
However, it should be remembered that while editors such as Underhill and McCann copy the word 'behold' from the manuscripts they are using, none of the introductions or the translators takes into consideration the importance of this biblical word, which is absolutely central to the Cloud itself. The possible exception is Progoff, who uses it at least once. There is also the problem that the translators substitute modern words for the Middle English that distort the meaning of the original: McCann's substitution of 'deadly' for 'deedly' is an example, the former having negative connotations, and the latter being a Middle English word that contains the entire history of salvation, from the fallen deeds of human beings to the great deed done by Christ and those of his saints which, with grace, are in the gift of all the redeemed, mortal though they be.The problem with any translation of a Middle English text is that modern English is much more linear, two-dimensional—and duller—than older versions.
In addition, all of these interpreters without exception fall into the 'experience' trap (discussed in previous posts, especially since September 2010) in rendering the Cloud—this in spite of the fact that several of them seem to understand the problem, e.g., Progoff, who is the most explicit about it in his introduction, and Walsh, whose text is full of footnotes on this point even though he is one of the worst offenders as regards using the word indiscriminately. All of the introductions, with the exception of Hodgson, should be taken with a very large handful of salt, each for a different reason.
A further problem is that most of these versions have a Counter-Reformation view of 'spiritual direction' and take pains to impose this model on the text where it doesn't exist. Again, Walsh is one of the worst offenders. They also fail to distinguish between confessor and director, which are two distinct functions, even though a confessor may give advice. It is significant that the Cloud-author uses 'counsel and conscience' to indicate taking advice from the elders, but makes it clear that the ultimate discernment was up to the individual, thus avoiding the unhealthy dependence attached to Counter-Reformation (and contemporary) 'spiritual directors'. In the Middle Ages the role of confession was strong, but the notion of a personal confessor was rare outside of aristocratic circles. In a monastery one could go to whom one chose, though the selection necessarily might be limited. The goal of the Cloud-author is to teach self-forgetfulness, not self-preoccupation, as he takes great effort to explain.
The Counter-Reformation's rigid ideas about so-called spiritual direction would have been considered shocking in the Egyptian and Syrian deserts: the maxim of the desert was non-interference (what some religious traditions call 'respect'). One did not presume to tell another what to do or think or how to pray. Often a suppliant would beg and cajole one of the Fathers or Mothers for direction, but the elder would respond with silence. This tradition also recognised that the same person did not always have the Word for the seeker, hence the saying about half the time spent in cell, half the time consulting the elders (plural). There were no novice-masters in the Carthusian Order at the time of the Cloud. There were elders, again, in the tradition of the Egyptian desert.
Finally, none of these versions really presents the Cloud-author in all his energy and complexity: the modern term 'edgy' perhaps comes close to describing him, at least for me. His text does not shrink from conveying raw truth in no uncertain terms. He can be unexpectedly tender; he uses humour, sarcasm, and biting satire. He does not hesitate to make trenchant judgements. (We must remember that the modern notion of never 'judging' people is a misinterpretation of the biblical injunction, which in fact means that we must never judge finally, i.e., claiming to judge from God's point of view; but in fact we must make judgements all the time if we are to negotiate our lives. This does not preclude engaging people with respect and without preconception or stereotype.)
The Cloud-author, to my way of thinking, would have been a fiercely intelligent, very amusing, slightly scary and utterly refreshing person to know, a genuine radical, one who wants to renew the connection with the roots of the Order in the apophatic tradition over and against the prevailing devotionalism of his day. He is something of a force of nature and maybe a bit of a loose cannon. He's not worried about being popular. He knows that what he is writing is dangerous for the times. He is not a kindly uncle, or a pontificating 'spiritual father', or a genteel commentator; least of all is he a human potential guru or a buddy. Each of the versions below, aside from Gallacher's version of the text itself (though not excepting Gallacher's introduction), falls into one of these unlikenesses. Like Julian's Long Text, the Cloud is, in the end, untranslatable.
1. The benchmark version is Hodgson; it's the one that scholars use. This volume contains all the works of the Cloud-author and Hodgson's work is impeccable. However, the text is in the Middle English spelling, which the non-scholarly reader may find difficult. The other drawback is that there is a lot of interesting work that has been done on the Cloud since this volume was published, and those seeking to pursue matters further would do well to check the bibliography in some of the later versions. René Tixier's work is quite wonderful.
2. Gallacher's version. This was published by TEAMS and the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University. This version follows Hodgson very closely—I haven't done a line-by-line check yet—and has the advantage not only that the spelling is modernized but that in addition to being published as a paperback it is also available online www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/gallachr.htm. There is a helpful glossary and some notes. I don't think much of the introduction, to put it mildly.
3. Underhill version. This is the closest of the modernized versions to the Hodgson benchmark but has some curious interpolations about spiritual direction, possibly due to her contact with von Hugel. She has not changed many words and for the modern reader may have not changed enough, but her version hast the advantage of clarity without intruding too many anachronisms. She has kept thee and thou and the -eth endings but somehow these are not intrusive as with McCann. This version is published online at several sites including the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Type 'Cloud of Unknowing Underhill' into your search engine. She omits the author's hyperbolic phrases that would offend genteel sensibilities, such as the mention of cutting off of private parts in chapter 12.
4. McCann. Oh dear, there are a number of problems here. First, while he claims to have used an assortment of mss, his version differs from Gallacher/Underhill enough so that one suspects he is privileging the Ampleforth manuscript, which he calls the 'second recension', and which is very different from the Hodgson text. Next, he has paraphrased, often quite patronizingly. His filter seems to be an effort to make this radical manuscript acceptable to a highly conservative, anti- 'modernist' pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic church. He has kept 'thee' and 'thou' and the -eth endings but there is something deliberately antiquated, a bit kitsch olde worlde about his paraphrases for reasons I haven't been able to put my finger on—yet. He also censors phrases such as that in chapter 12 about private parts—but we have to cut Underhill and McCann a little slack in this regard as they were working in the 1930s. McCann somehow makes the Cloud author sound precious, which he most certainly is not.
5. Wolters. Wolters' is an outright translation and he has the same concerns as McCann to make this work acceptable to a very conservative Roman Catholic audience on the cusp of Vatican II. His version has the advantage that he has dropped the 'thee', 'thou', and '-eth', but sometimes his paraphrases amount to Counter-Reformation glosses, and he seems to leave out or condense sections. He claims to be using Hodgson, but he also says he has consulted McCann, and, like McCann, he leans towards Ampleforth and the Latin (the original text is in English). As I create a parallel text of these versions, there are often times when I wonder if Wolters and McCann are using the same Middle English text as I and some of the others are.
6. Walsh tries to make the Cloud-author into a neo-scholastic, which he most certainly is not. His translation is prolix and full of the 'experience' problem. He is prone to making absurd and completely unsupportable claims such as: the practice the Cloud teaches cannot be undertaken by non-Christians. His scriptural and other citations are often wildly scattershot, not really seeming to relate to the text properly, as if he had a lot of references on slips of paper and threw them all up in the air and then wrote down whatever came to hand. He did the same with Julian's texts. However, his text has the advantage that it includes Richard Methley's comments in the footnotes. To my ear (but maybe this is due to the fact that I dislike his translation so much) he sometimes sounds fatuous.
7. Spearing is a self-confessed Cartesian and thinks that the ideas that you use to construct a sense of self are in fact your self, a view that is directly contrary to the Cloud-author's. In Spearing's paper on Marguerite Porete (whom, as he himself says, he doesn't understand, doesn't like, and is perhaps quite frightened of—one wonders why he published this paper), he scoffs at the notion of excessus mentis; he won't allow it. It seems rather strange for a self-proclaimed Cartesian to reject empirical science. Thus, in spite of the readability of his translation—if anything, it is too smooth—he gets the most of basic points wrong, exactly backwards, such as interpolating 'at himself' in the mirror section, when the whole point is that there is nothing to look at. And of course his text is full of 'experience'.
8. Progoff. This translation was done long before he became a journaling guru. In a strange way I rather like Progoff's translation: he is psychologically acute and his view in the introduction of who the author was rings true. However, he leaves out chunks of the text; the book was badly edited and sometimes his sentences don't make sense; and his application of Freud and Jung in the introduction is hopelessly crude and out of date.
Progoff's strengths far outweigh his weaknesses. He understand the 'experience' problem even if he is careless in his use of the word. He states bluntly that 'If, for example, the individual feels or experiences himself as being in unity with God, that very feeling and awareness of an experience indicates that real unity has not yet been achieved . . . the individual who experiences God thereby emphasizes the duality of his own individual existence, his personal thatness, and the existence of God as separate from him. In that case it cannot be said that he knows god truly and intimately in oneness.' Hooray for Progoff; would that the others had been so insightful and so forthright.
9. Johnston. This purported translation—only in part; it is really more a platform for Johnston himself—is so strange and has so many modern interpolations that I often wonder if he is using the same text as the rest of this group as a basis for what he is writing. Johnston comes from a humanistic psychology and human potential movement background, and is anachronistically continually looking at the Cloud through the lens of the much later John of the Cross. Johnston feels free to move paragraphs around or omit them altogether, to interpolate material that simply isn't there or even implicit. I'm not quite sure what this book is, but it doesn't have a lot to do with The Cloud of Unknowing.
My recommendation? Read Gallacher, with Underhill and Progoff together as a pony. Use a little Spearing if you have to in order to clarify but remember that he doesn't accept the basic premises of the text psychologically, theologically or philosophically. Keep in mind, too, that while his text is smooth, at key points it is exactly opposite to what the original says.
In closing I should say that I realise there are other, more recent, purported versions of The Cloud of Unknowing out there, but having glanced inside their covers I have not had the stomach to go any further.
posted by Maggie Ross at 10:36 pm
18 Comments:
Thanks for the helpful thoughts.
Magnificently useful!
good stuff, would like to speak further, may try the pony up idea, recently stumbled across the Cloud
When you say "Hodgson; it's the one that scholars use. This volume contains all the works of the Cloud-author and Hodgson's work is impeccable. However, the text is in the Middle English spelling"
Does that mean this text is not readable at all for an ordinary reader ? I'm thinking to buy a copy but seems to be expensive. And I don't want to buy something would not be able to read :)
To Nish 1013: it isn't that hard to learn the middle English spelling. It's always better to read in the original. You will struggle at first, but it quickly becomes second nature.
To Maggie Ross : Thank you so much. Did you check The Cloud of Unknowing
James Walsh ? Please le me know your findings
To Nish 1013 See No. 6 in this post. Walsh uses the word "experience" 108 times, whereas the Cloud-author uses it only once. The Cloud of Unknowing is NOT about having experiences but relinquishing all claims to experience. In the Cloud-author's day the word 'experience' meant 'prove' and that is the word the Cloud-author uses. Anything that happens is to be tested against received wisdom and the ancient writings.
To Maggie Ross: Thank you so much. I would like to read "Other Treatises". Is the only option available
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cloud-Unknowing-Treatises-Epistle-Counsel/dp/1614275831/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480334844&sr=1-1&keywords=Justin+McCANN ?
The other treatises are contained in Hodgson.
I am a little late to the party, but nish1013 was wondering about the readability of Hodgson's Middle English.
Based on the descriptions above, I thought Gallacher was a proper modernisation. However, the orthography remains pretty much unchanged from Hodgson: I noticed only that thorn and yogh were modernised to th and whatever, and the occasional i->j, u->v, &->and, etc. But right after "ianglers" to "janglers", he has retained "opyn preisers" which is purely a matter of orthography and therefore should be modernisable without loss of meaning. It seemed very random, to the extent that I'm not sure what the purpose of the book is. Unless it's just to make available cheaply the work; I don't know if the EETS edition or Analecta Cartusiana reprint is still available. I have been meaning to subscribe to the Early English Text Society, however, and you can get old titles quite affordably when you do.
My point is: if you're not sure if you should buy Hodgon's edition(s) of the Cloud-corpus (you should, either in the Analecta Cartusiana reprint or the two EETS volumes), you can check if you can read Gallacher. If you can, Hodgson is just as readable: d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/gallacher-cloud-of-unknowing
Anyhow, thank you for this piece, it was very informative. I'm working on the Cloud and wanted to check what translations exist, in case I need to compare to the original for clarity. I understand Walsh's introduction has some academic value - at least I've seen it cited - so I probably need to get that too.
I have just discovered your blog, and must thank you for helping so much the readers of the Cloud. I bought the Penguin edition shortly after it appeared, but somehow I have lost it. I tried to download an electronic version, mainly in order to bring it everywhere in my phone, and after several trials I settled for the version of CCEL. I have the serious problem of not being English (English is just my fourth language), and even the Gallacher version is too often hard-going for me. But as you mention the shortcomings of this version, I would be extremely thankful if you could show at least some passages where this deviation of "direction" is most apparent.
Thanks for your comment, Joan. If you will read my Silence: a User's Guide vol 1 it will explain. Blessings.
Thanks! What do you think of the translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher?
Blessings
Bosco
Haven't seen it.
I was very interested to read your observations on Underhill and Gallacher. A while ago I was reading the Cloud for the second time, in the Underhill version and it occurred to me that the best way to understand it might be to produce a modern rendition, i.e. readable but true to the original. A little way into the project, I found Gallacher online and have mostly worked from that. Having, as it were, found my stride, I am halfway through the book. At this point, I am looking for ways to reflect upon and develop the work.
Are you aware of people working in this area who might be amenable to developing a conversation? I am not currently attached to any university or other institution.
Thank you.
To Richard Ellis: Thanks for your comment; afraid I am out of the Cloud loop at this time, so I'm afraid I can't be of help. Sorry. Maggie Ross
What a wonderfully informative and refreshing analysis and commentary of the "Cloud" and its versions! Just with your observations on the change from "deadly" to "deadly," with with all its implications, evokes a desire to know more about those subtle changes in content and meaning.
It makes me think of the work by Dr. Ian McGilchrist, "The Master and his Emissary," comparing ancient and modern writers and their differences based on brain functions, in line with your conclusion that: "The problem with any translation of a Middle English text is that modern English is much more linear, two-dimensional—and duller—than older versions."
Thank you!
McGilchrist and I evolved our understanding independently and were astonished to find similarities in each other's work. My much more modest exposition is in 'Silence: A User's Guide' vol. 1 and II. Enjoy.
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